Philadelphia Phillies’ Rebuild Is a Slow Process

On Thursday, for the second year in a row, the Philadelphia 76ers chose first over all in the N.B.A. draft. Their fans have endured years of failure but seem convinced that the team’s highly promoted Process — capital P — will work. The 76ers have already set a franchise record for season-ticket sales, and they expect to sell out all their games.

Across Pattison Avenue, the Phillies, their rebuilding neighbors, have not inspired quite the same optimism. The Phillies are drawing better than they did last year, but they ranked 10th of 15 National League teams in attendance going into the weekend. In 2012, they led the league.

That was the first of what will soon be six consecutive seasons without a winning record, a string that followed a five-year run atop the N.L. East. The Phillies won a championship in 2008 — the only crown for a major pro sports franchise in Philadelphia over the last 34 years — but have fallen hard, with a major-league-worst 24-48 record through Friday.

Matt Klentak, their second-year general manager, finds comfort in the teams high above his in the standings. A few years ago, they were bad, too.

“The teams that have gone through successful rebuilds have gone through periods much like we’re going through right now,” Klentak said last week in his office at Citizens Bank Park. “The Washington Nationals were the worst team in baseball for two straight years. The Houston Astros were the worst team in baseball for three straight years. The Chicago Cubs were among the worst teams for a handful of years. In all of those stretches, there were stretches very similar to what we’ve gone through in the last six weeks.”

He continued: “It doesn’t make it fun to go through. We’re trying everything we can to pull out of it. But we know this is one of the challenges of rebuilding. We owe it to our franchise, to our fans, to our ownership to make sure that we don’t deviate from what we know is the right thing for the future of the club.”

For this season, the Phillies believed that meant adding veteran placeholders who could, in theory, become trade targets for contenders. As a big-market team, the Phillies could offer to pay part of their salaries to get better prospects in return.

But starter Clay Buchholz got hurt; outfielder Michael Saunders struggled so badly that he was designated for assignment; starter Jeremy Hellickson has compiled a 6.17 earned run average since the end of April. Reliever Pat Neshek and complementary players like Howie Kendrick and Daniel Nava have value but will not command a bonanza in return.

For fans, perhaps, it may be more troubling that the major league roster seems to lack future superstars. The team’s payroll shows as much: The Phillies have committed to just one player, outfielder Odubel Herrera, beyond this season. Ownership has shown it will spend when the time is right. But that time is not now, and the best prospects are not ready for a promotion.

“I think there are impact players coming in our system,” Klentak said. “From year to year, some players in minor leagues have better performances than others. They may shoot up a few places on a prospect list or fall a few places, but we’re confident that our system is going to produce players. And the combination of the players we produce internally — plus the financial resources that we’ll be able to devote to free agents or trading for big contracts in the near future — should bode well for the on-field success of this organization.”

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Outfielder Odubel Herrera, sliding into third on a triple this month, is the only Phillies player with a commitment beyond this season.CreditMitchell Leff/Getty Images

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The rookie pitcher Ben Lively being doused after the Phillies’ win over the Giants on June 3. Philadelphia has the worst record in the majors.CreditCorey Perrine/Getty Images

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Adam Haseley, right, the Phillies’ first-round pick in 2017, with Johnny Almarez, the team’s director of amateur scouting. The Phillies are counting on prospects like Haseley in the future.CreditMatt Slocum/Associated Press

Before this season, MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus both listed shortstop J. P. Crawford as a top-10 prospect. Yet Crawford, 22, is hitting just .209 at Class AAA Lehigh Valley, with an alarmingly low .278 slugging percentage. A top catching prospect, Jorge Alfaro, has been striking out prodigiously.

Among the starters, Aaron Nola and the rookies Ben Lively and Nick Pivetta have mostly held their own, but Jerad Eickhoff and Vince Velasquez have gone a combined 2-12 and are on the disabled list. The bullpen has been hit hard, and the offense has been anemic.

None of this should be surprising. The Phillies had a better record than seven other teams last season (71-91), but had by far the major leagues’ worst run differential, at minus 186. They are on track to draft first over all next June, as they did in 2016, when they took a high school outfielder, Mickey Moniak.

With prospects like Scott Kingery, Rhys Hoskins, Adam Haseley and Sixto Sanchez, Moniak is part of what Klentak believes could eventually be a wave of high-impact talent. All of the Phillies’ full-season farm teams are well over .500.

“There’s a difference between winning games in the minor leagues and developing players — those two things are not exactly the same — but there definitely is a correlation there,” Klentak said.

“We’re developing players in an environment where they’re accustomed to winning, and winning becomes a very big deal,” he continued. “That’s something we’ve been enormously successful at over the last year and a half. As we watch our minor league teams, you can see from level to level how winning becomes contagious.”

The major league team has not caught the bug. For the Phillies, the process is still unfolding.

Turning Height Into an Advantage

When Alex Meyer attended the University of Kentucky, people often mistook him for a member of the basketball team. He stands 6 feet 9, after all.

“It’s funny,” Meyer said, “because in my mind I was like, ‘You guys are the craziest basketball fans and you know every player on our team, so how do you not know that? No, I do not play.’”

Meyer loves basketball, but his skill on the Wildcats’ mound made him a first-round pick by the Washington Nationals in 2011 and a highly regarded prospect for the Minnesota Twins after a trade the next year. Now, after a trade last summer to the Los Angeles Angels, Meyer, at 27, is making good on his promise.

Before his start at Fenway Park on Friday, in which he gave up five runs and was chased in the fourth inning, Meyer had a 3.52 earned run average with 55 strikeouts in 46 innings. His 96-miles-an-hour-fastball is one of the hardest among starters, and his reach allows him to release it closer to the plate than most pitchers can, making the pitch seem even livelier.

“As he has harnessed his delivery, being able to repeat pitches a lot better, you see that his stuff plays,” Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said. “Guys don’t get good looks at it. From where Alex was last year when we saw him to now, it’s light-years ahead. “

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The 6-foot-9 Alex Meyer, pitching for the Angels last Sunday, has benefited from a simplified delivery.CreditSean M. Haffey/Getty Images

Meyer missed much of last season with shoulder inflammation, and when he joined the Angels in September, he was essentially still recovering. The Angels worked with him on his balance over the rubber, making sure he split his hands before driving to the plate. A simplified delivery — “an abbreviated stretch,” Meyer called it, similar in style to David Price’s and Noah Syndergaard’s — has given him better body control.

“For somebody with long limbs like him, it’s hard to repeat a lot of times,” said the Angels’ pitching coach, Charles Nagy. “But he’s been doing a great job.”

Meyer is taller than every other pitcher in the majors except Kansas City’s Chris Young, who is 6-10 (and who was designated for assignment on Friday). When Meyer grew six inches from eighth grade to his freshman year of high school, Meyer said, he looked like a baby giraffe on the mound, gangly and uncoordinated. Yet for years, he resisted the notion that his height should make pitching more challenging.

“Then you look at my track record, and it’s been a bit of inconsistency, so it kind of plays into that,” Meyer said. “But I try not to use that as a crutch for anything. Shoot, you’d think being tall would be some sort of advantage. I’ve definitely struggled at times being in the strike zone consistently, repeating mechanics. But if done right, it should be an advantage for me.”

Now that it is, Meyer expects to pitch for a while. In time, though, he will apply his height the way most people expect.

“When my baseball career is over — and hopefully, that’s a long time from now — that’ll be the first thing I do,” he said. “Sign up for a Y league and go play some basketball.”

More Than Just a Donation

Major League Baseball and the players’ association presented a $1 million check on Wednesday to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. As baseball tries to rebuild African-American participation, Commissioner Rob Manfred said, the donation highlighted the importance of educating young players on the history of the Negro Leagues. Manfred and the executive director of the union, Tony Clark, attended the ceremony.

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From left, Commissioner Rob Manfred; Mayor Sly James of Kansas City, Mo.; Judy Pace Flood, the widow of Curt Flood; Tony Clark, executive director of the players’ association; and the Hall of Famer Dave Winfield at a ceremony in which baseball and the union presented a $1 million check to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.CreditJill Toyoshiba/The Kansas City Star, via Associated Press

Bob Kendrick, the museum’s president, told The Kansas City Star that while the league and the union had helped before, “this is the first time that we’ve sat down and looked at a cooperative kind of collaborative relationship. As much as we’re excited by the amount of the check, I’m more excited that the commissioner was here and that Tony was here, because I think this helps gets the message out this is not just a charitable contribution — this is a partnership.”

A Great Outing, and a Surprising Loss

If you thought it was strange to see an “L” next to Max Scherzer’s name Wednesday, you were right. Scherzer, the Washington Nationals right-hander, fired seven no-hit innings in Miami before the Marlins rallied for two unearned runs to beat him, 2-1. He struck out 11 and allowed two hits and one walk.

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The Nationals’ Max Scherzer took a no-hitter into the eighth inning against the Marlins on Wednesday, but he went on to give up two unearned runs and lose.CreditJasen Vinlove/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

According to the Baseball Reference Play Index, only two other pitchers since 1913 have taken a loss despite working eight innings, allowing no earned runs and no more than two hits, while striking out at least 10. The last was Nolan Ryan for the Angels in 1972.

The other came in one of the more remarkable games in baseball history. On May 2, 1917, at what is now Wrigley Field in Chicago, neither the Cubs nor the Cincinnati Reds had a hit through nine innings — the only time that has happened in major league history. The Cubs’ Hippo Vaughn, who fanned 10, allowed two hits and an unearned run in the 10th and lost to the Reds’ Fred Toney, who finished a 10-inning no-hitter.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section SP, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Phillies’ Rebuild Is a Slow Process. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe